A Sharon Springs woman is dead after her vehicle was struck a truck in rural Wallace County Saturday afternoon.

According to the Kansas Highway Patrol, around 12:15 pm Steven Christopher Reeves, 20, of Amarillo, TX was westbound on Wallace County Road F in a 2001 Volvo truck hauling a grain trailer when he failed to yield to a southbound 1990 Ford Tempo traveling down Wallace County Road 26, driven by Helen Charles, 68, of Sharon Springs. Reeves struck Charles on her driver’s side door.

Charles was taken to Greeley County Hospital where she died of her injuries.

Reeves was not injured in the accident.

(AP) – A McPherson refinery is building a new $555 million facility.

The Hutchinson News reports that the National Cooperative Refinery Association will begin construction on the new Delayed Coking Unit in 2013. The project is expected to take two years. NCRA is a cooperative engaged in crude oil acquisition, transportation, refining and distribution.

The new facility will replace one that’s been in operation at the refinery since 1952.

Apart from construction jobs, the new unit won’t add jobs or increase production at the refinery.

The company says the facility’s purpose of the unit is to squeeze more liquid products – gasoline and diesel – out of the heaviest portion of the crude oil barrel.

(AP) – Preliminary numbers show Missouri ended the blistering summer of 2011 with nearly 40 confirmed heat-related deaths, the largest number in a decade. Kansas reported 23 heat-related deaths in its first year of tracking them.

In the Kansas City area alone, 20 deaths were related to soaring temperatures. The victims included two men who died during an extreme obstacle-course event in July called the Warrior Dash. They were 31-year-old Jeff Fink, of Olathe, Kansas and 28-year-old Jeremy Morris, of suburban Grandview.

The Missouri Department of Health and Environment reported that 13 people died in the St. Louis metropolitan area. Six others died elsewhere in Missouri.

Besides the deaths in Kansas, the state’s health agency reported that 565 people sickened by the heat were treated at emergency rooms and other health facilities.

(AP) – The legal fray in Kansas over a state law aimed at stripping a Planned Parenthood chapter of federal family planning money is now being played out before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

On Friday, the state filed its second appeal in the case to the 10th Circuit.

It is now appealing the ruling by U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten mandating the state to resume federal Title X funding to the unaffiliated Dodge City Family Planning Clinic.

The state’s appeal of a similar order regarding funding Planned Parenthood’s clinics in Wichita and Hays is already pending.

At issue in the lawsuit is the constitutionality of a new Kansas law requiring the state to first allocate federal Title X money to public health departments and hospitals.

(AP) — Police in Kansas City, Kansas, say they don’t plan to seek charges against a man who shot his grandson in the head outside a sporting goods store.

The shooting happened Friday afternoon in the parking lot of Cabela’s hunting and outdoor equipment store. Police say the grandfather was in an SUV unloading an antique .22-caliber rifle that he planned to have appraised.

KCTV reports the weapon discharged and the bullet went through the vehicle, hitting the 10-year-old boy in the head as he stood outside.

The boy was taken to a hospital. Authorities said he was talking when police arrived in the parking lot and his wound was not considered life-threatening.

(AP) – A police affidavit says an FBI cadaver dog indicated a reaction to the scent of dead person inside the Kansas city home where a baby girl disappeared nearly three weeks ago.

Police filed the affidavit to support a search warrant request for the home of Deborah Bradley and Jeremy Irwin, who reported their 10-month-old daughter, Lisa, missing Oct. 4.

The affidavit says the dog taken into the house Monday indicated a “hit” on the floor of Bradley’s bedroom. A judge approved the search warrant Tuesday and police and the FBI conducted a daylong search Wednesday.

Court documents filed Friday say police took blankets, toys and clothing from the house, as well as rolls of tape and a tape dispenser.

A Vietnam veteran from Nevada will serve nearly six months in jail after pleading no contest to stealing $600 from a man who had just been killed in a two-vehicle crash in southwest Kansas.

The Dodge City Globe reports David Bilbrey’s attorney told a Ford County judge her client suffers from severe post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Prosecutors say James Cox of Plains was carrying a large amount of money when he was killed in a crash Sept. 11 on U.S. 54 near Bucklin. Bilbrey’s attorney, Deanna Knapp, says her client drove up to the scene, checked Cox’s pulse and then picked the money up off the road and drove away.

Knapp says the crash triggered a flashback to the violence Bilbrey had seen in Vietnam and he shut down.